The ESP Timeline (one of the site's most popular features) has been
completely updated to allow the user to select (using the timeline controls
above each column) different topics for
the left and right sides of the display.

The King's Speech wins Academy Award for best picture. The 2010 film was another unlikely subject matter: The king of England needs to eliminate his stutter. But it became a touching film about a man overcoming personal obstacles, family love, and friendship. Colin Firths acting, Tom Hoopers direction, and David Seidlers script all won Oscars and got huge ovations from the Oscar audience.

Two studies released in the same week indicate that modern Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians descended from an earlier migration out of Africa than did other populations. Further, the studies suggest that participants in the earlier migration interbred with Denisovans.

2011

The Artist wins Academy Award for best picture. This was yet another unlikely winner: a black-and-white film without dialogue, set in 1920s Hollywood, and made by French filmmakers. It was the first best picture Oscar winner to be set in the movie industry and only the second silent film, after original winner Wings.

(no entry for this year)

2012

Argo wins Academy Award for best picture. The film about the true-life rescue of hostages in Tehran, was directed by Ben Affleck; it became the first movie in 23 years to take top prize without a director nomination. It was also the fourth film in a decade with key scenes shot in Los Angeles. And it has one other major distinction: Variety plays an important role in a plot twist.

Based on new genetic research, David Reich, Svante Pääbo and collaborators announce at a Royal Society of London meeting that Denisovans bred with Neanderthals, ancestors of people now living in East Asia and Oceania, and another group of extinct archaic humans who were genetically dissimilar to both Neanderthals and modern humans. A few weeks later, Matthias Meyer, Svante Pääbo and coauthors describe the oldest hominin DNA sequence to date, from a 400,000-year-old femur from Spain's Sima de los Huesos. The mitochondrial DNA indicate an unexpected link to Denisovans.

Using genetic material from more than 300 individuals, including aboriginal Australians from the Northern Territory, a team of geneticists argues that Australians — long believed isolated from other populations for some 45,000 years — received substantial gene flow from India about 4,230 years ago.

2013

Photograph by Hilda Clayton: Photographer records her own death. On 2 July 2013, Spec. Hilda Clayton, a combat photographer in the U.S. Army, was documenting a live-fire exercise in Afghanistan when a mortar tube accidentally exploded in front of her. This picture records the explosion that killed her, the soldier in the image, and three others,

12 Years a Slave wins Academy Award for best picture. The film about U.S. slavery was directed by Steve McQueen and written by John Ridley, based on the memoirs of Solomon Northup, a free man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. The film earned an impressive $188 million worldwide, with 70% of that from outside the U.S. It earned three Oscars out of nine nominations and Brad Pitt was among the producers.

(no entry for this year)

2014

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) wins Academy Award for best picture. The film, about a faded star attempting a stage comeback, was technically dazzling, appearing to have been shot in one continuous take. Not everyone loved the Alejandro Inarritu-directed comedy-drama and some were mystified by the ending. But the people who liked it REALLY liked it.

Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, Arhat Abzhanov and colleagues announce that they have reverse engineered dinosaur snouts in chicken embryos by altering beak- building gene expressions.

Spotlight wins Academy Award for best picture. The fact-based story, about a Boston newspaper team, won two Oscars, for film and screenplay (by Josh Singer and director Tom McCarthy). It marked the second consecutive win for a film starring Michael Keaton.

(no entry for this year)

2016

Moonlight wins Academy Award for best picture. The Moonlight win was a record-breaker in Academy history: It was the first film with an all-black cast, with many black artists behind the camera, and was the first gay-themed film to take the top prize. It was also at the center of Oscars biggest snafu: Due to a mix-up in envelopes, Faye Dunaway announced La La Land as the winner, and it took a few minutes before the real Moonlight victory was announced.

Sculptures by Damien Hirst: Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable — his first major show of new work since the financial collapse of 2009. The collection is being shown at Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, the two Venetian venues of the Pinault Collection. The conceit behind the show is that the works were originally a stash of ancient treasures, lost in a shipwreck nearly 2000 years ago, and recently recovered. The long-lost treasures include giant sculptures of sea monsters encrusted with coral and semiprecious stones; golden monkeys, unicorns and tortoises; as well as a goddess whose face looks oddly like Kate Moss, a marble pharaoh that resembles Pharrell Williams and a bronze statue of Mickey Mouse (pictured), covered with centuries of marine growth.

The Shape of Water wins Academy Award for best picture. Fox Searchlights The Shape of Water centers on the 1962 romance between a mute janitor and an Amazonian fish-man. Its an eccentric premise, but voters were swept away by the dreamlike visuals, the heart-on-your-sleeve emotions, and the subtle social commentary of the film. It was a tight Oscar race, but voters seemed happy to salute Guillermo del Toro, one of the best-liked and most respected artists working in film.

(no entry for this year)

2018

Green Book wins Academy Award for best picture. Green Book is a 2018 American biographical drama film directed by Peter Farrelly. Set in 1962, the film is inspired by the true story of a tour of the Deep South by African-American classical and jazz pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and Italian-American bouncer Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) who served as Shirley's driver and bodyguard. The film was written by Farrelly, Brian Hayes Currie and Vallelonga's son, Nick Vallelonga, based on interviews with his father and Shirley, as well as letters his father wrote to his mother. The film is named after The Negro Motorist Green Book, a mid-20th century guidebook for African-American travelers written by Victor Hugo Green, to help them find motels and restaurants that would accept them.

(no entry for this year)

2019

(no entry for this year)

ESP Quick Facts

ESP Origins

In the early 1990's,
Robert Robbins
was a faculty member at Johns
Hopkins, where he directed the informatics core of GDB
— the human gene-mapping database of the international human
genome project. To share papers with colleagues around the world, he
set up a small paper-sharing section on his personal web page. This
small project evolved into The Electronic Scholarly
Publishing Project.

ESP Support

In 1995, Robbins became the VP/IT of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research
Center in Seattle, WA. Soon after arriving in Seattle, Robbins secured
funding, through the ELSI component of the US Human Genome Project, to
create the original ESP.ORG web site, with the formal goal of
providing free, world-wide access to the literature of classical genetics.

ESP Rationale

Although the methods of molecular biology can seem almost
magical to the uninitiated, the original
techniques of classical genetics are readily appreciated by one and
all: cross individuals that differ in some inherited trait, collect
all of the progeny, score their attributes, and propose mechanisms
to explain the patterns of inheritance observed.

ESP Goal

In reading the early works of classical genetics, one is drawn, almost
inexorably, into ever more complex models, until molecular explanations
begin to seem both necessary and natural. At that point, the tools
for understanding genome research are at hand. Assisting readers reach
this point was the original goal of The Electronic Scholarly Publishing
Project.

ESP Usage

Usage of the site grew rapidly and has remained high. Faculty began
to use the site for their assigned readings. Other on-line
publishers, ranging from The New York Times to Nature
referenced ESP materials in their own publications. Nobel laureates
(e.g., Joshua Lederberg) regularly used the
site and even wrote to suggest changes and improvements.

ESP Content

When the site began, no journals
were making their early content available in
digital format. As a result, ESP was obliged to digitize classic
literature before it could be made available. For many important
papers — such as
Mendel's original paper
or the
first genetic map
— ESP had to produce entirely new typeset versions of the works,
if they were to be available in a high-quality format.

ESP Help

Early support from the DOE component of the Human Genome Project was
critically important for getting the ESP project on a firm foundation.
Since that funding ended (nearly 20 years ago), the project has been
operated as a purely volunteer effort.
Anyone wishing to assist in these efforts should send an
email to Robbins.